Grief-stricken, the mother confirmed that the woman in the photograph was indeed the kidnapper. Minutes later, the mother was driven to the police station, while three doctors drove to the major bus depot in Gaborone (where about 2000 people congregate to get combies and buses to every village throughout the country) with a picture of the kidnapper and baby in their hands. They showed the picture to hundreds of people at the bus station, but no one recognized the woman.
The story ran on the 9 o’clock news that night, again with the well focused images of both the woman and the baby. By the morning, the police had several leads. Most importantly, the cab driver who had driven the woman suspect to Molepolole (about 80 km away) the previous afternoon had seen the news that night, recognized the woman and baby, and contacted the police.
The woman spent the night with family or friends in Molepolole and then traveled to Kanye the next morning (about 2 ½ hours outside of Gaborone). People in that village had contacted the police saying that this woman had been pregnant recently, but did not have a baby, and now she returned to the village with a baby who did not look like a newborn. By late afternoon on Wednesday, the police and a medical team from our clinic were on their way to this woman’s village.
They located the woman at home who adamantly declared that this was her own baby, but both Brian and the screening clinic nurse Bonnie recognized both the baby and the woman from the previous day’s visit.
Fortunately, the baby was in very good condition. The woman was arrested, and they all returned to Gaborone that night where the mother was finally reunited with her baby daughter.
Divine Intervention
Amber Alert in Botswana - Who Woulda Thought?
Dr. Chelsea is a friend who’s volunteering her pediatrician services in Botswana, thousands of miles away from her American home. She titles her recent account of her day to day experience “Divine Intervention”. I mused, “Amber Alert in Botswana...who woulda thought?"
Last Tuesday started out as any other clinic day. We finished seeing patients around 2pm, and several of the doctors were having a meeting shortly afterward.
The meeting was halted abruptly when the wailing of a mother rang through the halls of the clinic. A nightmare had just occurred in our clinic—her six week old baby was kidnapped. All we knew at that point is that another woman had befriended this mother at the clinic, and she had kidnapped the baby when the mother asked the woman to hold her baby for a minute as she went to the bathroom. As she returned from the bathroom, she discovered that both the woman and baby were missing. Two ladies who are regular venders in our courtyard saw the woman leave the clinic with the baby, and asked her if she was the baby’s mother. She claimed to be the grandmother, so they did not stop her any further. Other people had seen the woman lingering in the waiting room all day without a child of her own, and thought, at least in retrospect, that she seemed suspicious, but no one confronted the woman at the time.
After hearing a brief description of the baby (I was only told that she was in a blue jumper and yellow hat), we quickly spread out and searched the campus of the hospital, trying to find the woman kidnapper and the baby, but to no avail. We returned to the clinic about 15 minutes later to find the mother still weeping in a chair. Her cries were powerful and tore at our hearts.
But Tuesday turned out to be a unique day for several reasons. In preparation for World AIDS Day (Dec 1st), a visiting photographer from England had wanted to take photographs of some of the HIV positive babies on the pediatric wards. My friend, Brian, showed him around the wards that afternoon, but for some reason none of the babies’ mothers were at the bedside to consent for the photographs, so they walked over to our clinic to take pictures of clinic patients instead. This baby was the last patient left in the waiting room, and the mom agreed to let the photographer take some pictures of Brian examining her baby. After the pictures were taken, Brian went upstairs for the meeting, the photographer left for the airport (his flight back to England was leaving that night), and the mom had the screening clinic visit where she was told the good news that her baby was HIV negative. Shortly after the visit, she asked the woman to hold her baby in the waiting room while she went to the bathroom, and when she returned from the bathroom, the woman had vanished.
But this baby was luckier than most. Minutes after the kidnapping occurred, the clinic assistant director called the photographer on his cellphone, and he returned immediately to the clinic to upload the pictures he had taken on his camera. Not only did he have a close up picture of the baby, but in one of the pictures, the woman suspect was in the background. He enlarged this image and we were able to print out a well focused picture of the kidnapper.
I’m hopeful that AP and/or CNN would pick up this story...it might prod people’s conscience with regard to service.
Bolaji
